


Of Stardust, Wookies and hugs

by pingou



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Based on a Tumblr Post, Daddy Issues, Gen, I just roll with it, I mean it's SW, RO thy name is angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-20
Updated: 2018-01-20
Packaged: 2019-03-07 07:16:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13429638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pingou/pseuds/pingou
Summary: Once a friend of mine dreamt that Jyn met Chewie, that he had rescued her. This is me granting her wish somewhat.Jyn is young here, on the run, but hugs are powerful, particularly when one is deprived of it.Canon compliant.





	Of Stardust, Wookies and hugs

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jenniferjun1per](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jenniferjun1per/gifts).



Jyn was not familiar with Wookies — actually, she believed Chewbacca was the first she’d ever encountered. She had had a soft toy that looked a bit like that, she thought idly while wiggling down the pipes. Much to her dismay, once adrenaline usually left her system, the most mundane stuff came to mind. It was something she despised, yet she has to admit Wookies were the current focus of her brain.

Only it was not the time to get distracted by useless thoughts, much less about trivia and other toys she may have had a lifetime ago on Lah’mu. However, a brief flash of Stormy, her dearest game companion, flashed before her inner eyes. However, there was nothing cute or wistful about the real, human stormtroopers that were supposedly still looking for her now...

Hence the hiding, making her escape through the pipes business.

By Force only knows what miracle, nobody had caught her in the vast, deserted hangar. They’d followed her there, seeking to put her — that is, Tanith Ponta — under arrest. But if something good came out of her time with Saw and the Partisans, it was that she had mastered the art of sneaking out undetected if need be. 

Yet of course they didn’t take kindly to her massive destruction of Imperial property earlier, but their droids made fine target practice... She’d been literally trained to bring them down, after all, speaking of the Gerrera method! Better droids than humans, it counts for something, no? 

She could have been way more lethal, but the smugglers she was traveling with at the moment had emphasized on the necessity to be as discrete as possible. She may be eighteen, but she was not careless, she seethed while she crawled slowly but surely out of the hangar. According to some previous information, that place actually housed various blaster models, all assigned to notorious figures of the Empire.

They were beautifully made, and yes, perhaps Jyn wanted to see them, maybe steal one for her own use... so what? It would have been for her own protection... she went, saw that only ten droids were guarding the stock and made the necessary clean up so she could peek at the stock.

They were neatly organized, sorted alphabetically according to their intended possessor. Instinctively, she perused the E section, found the one reserved for Erso. She doesn’t quite know why she picked this one — maybe the felony seems lesser since it was, by birth, under her own name? Or on the contrary, was it worsened because it was technically assigned to her estranged father? 

It was a stupid move though, no matter what. If someone ever saw she was using an Imperial blaster lawfully belonging to the scientist Galen Erso, there were bound to be questions, the sort of which she would like to avoid... anyway in the end she had dropped the thing like the iron had  burned her flesh. Surely because if a way it was: Galen, her father, was still her flesh wherever he was, no matter which name she used, or which task he was completing for her mother’s murderer.

Then the squad arrived, and she had fled. 

She was arriving at the end of the ventilation system and after some kicking, the last grill gave away. She took great care into replacing it, so her little stunt would not be known immediately, and took in her surroundings.

She apparently found herself in some sort of a keeper’s lodgings but by an amazing happenstance, this too was currently vacant. The two guys traveling with her — from whom she used the ship, really — were nowhere to be found as well. She cannot be more grateful for this. 

They were meant to pass some stuff unnoticed, likely from a shady origin. They had separated earlier, and were meant to reunite at the ship — a piece of junk called the Millenium Falcon — once everything got sorted out.  Then they would leave and she would end up wherever they would drop her off. Sounded easy enough this morning, yet she had screwed up.

She held her vibro-blade before her in a flash as the door handle suddenly rattled and opened. But it was only the Wookie presenting his two hands — or paws? — upfront in a placating gesture. She lowered her weapon, knowing that it would have offered her little protection against him anyway. Then he crouched down, slamming the door behind him as she heard the boots of troopers coming nearer to where they hid.

She held her breath and so he must have been too, but eventually they didn’t hear anything. Then, probably wanting to be as quick as possible — he had way longer legs than her, after all — he scooped her up and ran in direction of his ship.

She was so surprised by his swift move that she let herself be carried like a rag doll even while berating herself for it. In considerably less time than it would have taken her however, he had them safely inside of the massive but old grey ship.

Before she could offer her an explanation or even thank him for coming somehow to her rescue, he had put her back on her feet. A bit disoriented already, she was even more lost when he suddenly pulled her back against his warm form.

It chafed her worse than anything, his hug, or perhaps he was used to pull people to his fur like this, tall as he was. She knew that he could feel her silent tears, but he didn’t address it. Not a growl, or a pat, nothing. Just him holding her steadily against him. She couldn’t even think now, her thoughts whimsical, sharp and cutting like broken glass:

Frightened foolish girl. Saw would have been so ashamed. That was why he left. Why everyone always went away and left her behind. 

“Hey, what’s this?”

She all but jumped out off her skin as the smuggler Han Solo appeared behind them, looking annoyed. This time Chewbacca howled something — the vibrations reaching her moist cheek — but she wouldn’t turn around as long as she did not regain her cool.

She felt better already, she thought clearer, at any rate. But she still had some pride left, as least Tanith Pontha was not a crybaby.

Apparently, Chewie had asked for a medical kit, as he started to dab at her wounds. For one so tall, so big, and generally fearsome, the creature was surprisingly gentle and precise with his tending. She had barely noticed the blood on her clothes, the odd cuts and the boo-boos caused by friction. Being pampered like this left her speechless for even when she were younger, nobody had really cared whether she got roughed or not.

Nobody except her parents, once, she thought with a scowl, her Papa had been especially worrying about her wellbeing. She wondered if the Wookie had a child — or was it a cub? — of his own too. He seemed just the type, paternal.

To her utter mortification, she must have said something about it, because the Wookie froze, his eyes visibly pained and ageless fixed on her face. She felt the fleeting burn of shame in her gut — after all, it was none of her business — but before she could stutter anything, Solo voiced in a darker tone than ever before:

“I don’t know if anyone told you before, but you should mind your own business. You’re kinda bothersome already, attracting stormtroopers... but if you must know, Chewie had a family once, a wife and a son. Now it’s just the two of us so keep your curiosity to yourself.”

He was rude, but to be fair she deserved it, she wouldn’t have liked someone perusing her past either. Plus, she was bothersome indeed. She had moneyed her passing out off the planet under false pretenses, using the intel she got from locals to help the two companions, but she didn’t offer more and thus was not entitled to ask personal questions.

It was nothing but a transaction, nothing more. They didn’t know her — under any names but that of Tanith Pontha, anyway — and it was best for everyone involved here. She could not afford to trust somebody. Not even the kind Wookie who resumed his care.

But because she was not completely heartless, she whispered hoarsely once he was done:

“I know how it feels, I had a family too, once.”

Her parents, the Partisans... all gone. Or at least, far from her reach. She thought he sent her what was meant to be a comforting smile and sighed.

The following morning, she had already disappeared from her bunk.

Jyn never saw the kind Wookie again, but she did not forgot him and his gentleness appeared often at night when Liana Hallik was trapped in her Imperial cell on Wobani.

She had known so few people that were gentle, even willing to hug her in her life. Maybe it was why, much later on Scarif, waiting for the world to end, the weight of Cassian Andor pressed against her was such a balm to her.

She never could think of a more lovely, a more peaceful way to go but being held in the arms of someone who cared.


End file.
